Victory May 28 Review-Long

[Lulachick]

This was our first cruise so I was up for anything.... We arrived in Charleston on Sunday to enjoy the city that we had honeymooned in 9 yrs earlier. We arrived in downtown about 10:30am on Monday morning and decided to take a carriage ride thru the city just to kill some time. We saw the Victory come in and my DD almost bounced herself right out of the carriage she was so excited. After the carriage ride we went to the port police and asked them what time we would be boarding and they told us 4pm and we were like ok. We went shopping in the City Market and after we finished our shopping we went and hung out on the City Pier and just watched the Victory from our very nice vantage point. Around 2:15pm I noticed the shuttle buses bringing people in and I decided to look and check out things further and sure enough I saw what looked like carry-ons. We walked back over to the port police and they informed us that the USCG and cleared the ship for embarkation. We followed directions and did what we were supposed to do at the port area.

 

Embarkation: We arrived at the terminal and the lines moved fairly quickly as lines go. We checked in and gave our debit card info for our S&S cards ( more on that later), moved on for our embarkation pictures ( I will remember from now on to make sure I look picture good). We were shown the way to the gangway and we were on the Victory. The checkin crew was very nice when they had us pose for our pics. We we told we could go on to our room-wow. We got to our room and both sets of luggage for both rooms had beat us to the rooms- wow:cool: .

 

Room: The room was a good size for me ( OV) I am claustrophobic as it is. We were very impressed with the size of the room. It was very clean and our room steward Kus had already put our beds togather for us:) . The bathrooms were clean and stocked. We had more than enough closet and drawer space for us. The shower stall was interesting in that you had to be careful to keep the shower curtian inside the thing on the floor ( I don't know what it is called so don't laugh) or the water would go everywhere. Carnival could invest in some magnets to hold the curtians in place, but otherwise the bathroom was suitable. I have seen hotel bathrooms far worse.

 

Activities: Malcolm in the Middle is a hoot. He has something planned all the time for all ages groups that he is responsible for ( that would be us). I enjoyed Bingo, Art Auction, Newlywed Game, Scavenger Hunt amongst other things. If someone can't find something to do it is either because they don't want to or they are dead.

Camp Carnival: My daughter is 8yo and she really enjoyed herself. She let us know if she wanted to go or not. We did not send her to CC to get her away from us but we used CC to enhance her cruise experience. CC held a talent show on the last night of the cruise and for the most part it was tasteful. One child ( 6 yo) decided he wanted to do some hip-hop dancing (if you can call it that) which included some sexual inuendo moves and I was not pleased to say the least. CC staff decided that he should be called back up for a 2nd time because he was "so good" I almost lost lunch. I did make my complaints known in black and white.

 

Entertainment: We enjoyed the revue shows. My daughter got a kick out of the dancers wearing as she calls them "butterscotch". She enjoyed her dance lesson from a Victory dancer in CC. The music was a bit loud and could have been toned down a bit in both shows. The magician was wonderful. He was both funny and very good as a magician. He interacted with the audiance very well. I did not see the comedy show so I can't comment on that but I heard he was very good and clean mouthed.

 

Food/Dining Experience: We were seated in the Pacific Dining Room and really enjoyed ourselves with Jana and Xin. Jana is from Slovakia and Xin is from China. Both ladies constantly had their "A"game on. My daughter after the first night never had to tell them what she wanted to eat or drink. They always had a coloring book and a hug and kiss ready for her. The lobster to me was fabulous as was the Prime Rib. There was one night that I could not find a starter that I wanted and Jana rememebered taht I liked the Tiger Shrimp and suggested that and off she went. The Medd. Rest. on the Lido was ok as buffetts go. My daughter kept the pizza place in business.

 

 

Room Steward: Kus was always around but never seen. He took the time to do special things for my little girl like making sure he friends were ready to go to bed with her each night and that tells me he cares about his guests.

 

Disembarkation: Was not fun. Customs took their sweet time clearing us and we had Tropical Storm Barry on top of Charleston that day also. It took us 6 hrs to clear but we took it all in stride.

 

All in all we had a great cruise and I want to do another one with Carnival real soon.

[direfun2000]

Great review!! Thanks for sharing!:)

[DeeT]

Thanks for your review. We'll be on the Victory in 2008.

[gzusnme]

If I may ask, what was the goody with the debit card pertainig to the S&S card?

[Lulachick]

My DH was standing over me and trying to hurry me along to go to of all places Wal-Mart:D . They wrote down our Debit card info at check in and some how it never made it to the computer system so two nights into the sailing we get this note on our bed that we have no money in our acct. I freaked out because it covered four people including my m-i-l :confused:.We promptly went the next morning and got it straigtend out at the pursers desk. They still could not tell us what happened. We still ended up paying our bill in cash at the end of the cruise.:)